Elsewhere in Science, 4 October 2013

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Elsewhere in Science, 4 October 2013

Every week, Science publishes a few articles that are likely to be of interest to career-minded readers. But because those articles aren't featured on Science Careers, our readers could easily overlook them.

To remedy that, every Friday we're pointing readers toward articles appearing in Science—the print magazine as well as the other Science-family publications (ScienceInsider, ScienceNow, Science Translational Medicine—Sci. TM—and Science Signaling)—that hold some relevance or nuggets of advice for readers interested in furthering their careers in science. (Please note that while articles appearing in ScienceInsider and ScienceNow can be read by anyone, articles appearing in Sci. TM and Science may require AAAS membership/Science subscription or a site license.)

In Letters, NextGen VOICES posts the winning submissions to its question about work-life balance.

In a Perspective, Carsten Könneker and Beatrice Lugger argue that the relationship emerging between scientists and the public in this new digital age really isn't new. "In some ways, science is returning to a relationship with the public that was the norm in earlier times."

Here's one that might have important practical benefits for scientists—especially those who feel a need to interact with other people better. In ScienceNow, Kelly Servick reports on research showing that reading highbrow literary works improves "our ability to understand the thoughts, emotions, and motivations of those around us."

In "Who's Afraid of Peer Review?" John Bohannon describes a fun and revealing experiment. Posing as Ocorrafoo Cobange, a fictitious biologist at the (nonexistent) Wassee Institute of Medicine in Asmara, he submitted "304 versions of [a] wonder drug paper to open-access journals. More than half of the journals accepted the paper, failing to notice its fatal flaws. Beyond that headline result, the data from this sting operation reveal the contours of an emerging Wild West in academic publishing."

It turns out that, just as there are predatory open-access journals there are also predatory conferences. Jon Cohen reports.